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Saturday, 19 December 2015

Iron Gods - Valley of the Brain Collectors

Brain
collectors have always been an iconic Dungeons & Dragons monster
to me, although they're probably not amongst the first few monsters
that spring to most people's minds when they think of the game.
Nevertheless, they have been around a long time, first appearing way
back in X2: Castle Amber, one
of my favourite adventures from my childhood. I must have run that
adventure fifty times back in the day. If I recall correctly, there
is only one brain collector in Castle Amber
and, like most monsters in that adventure, its appearance is rather
random. Nevertheless, it made an impression on my young mind—an
impression that has stayed with me ever since.

Castle
Amber was an adventure for the
Expert Rules set of the “Basic” Dungeons & Dragons game, back
in the day when there were two separate games: Dungeons & Dragons
and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (“Basic” is a misnomer as it
only technically refers to the first of what would eventually become
five sets of rules, yet many people persisted in calling the entire
game “Basic D&D”). It wasn't until the Mystara
Monstrous Compendium was
published that brain collectors first appeared in AD&D (when the
Mystara setting was updated from a D&D setting to an AD&D
setting). After that, brain collectors eventually showed up in the
more generic Monster Manuals for 3rd Edition, even appearing as
an epic version in the Epic Levels Handbook.
Brain collectors first showed up in Pathfinder in Bestiary 2, under their actual
race name which has tagged along with them since Castle
Amber: neh-thalggus.

My
fascination with brain collectors is such that any adventure with
them in the title is likely to grab my attention. Thus, ever since
Valley of the Brain Collectors
was announced, I've been eager to reach and read this instalment of
the Iron Gods
Adventure Path. Yet obviously, it takes more than an appearance of a
neh-thalggu or two to make an adventure good and fun. Indeed,
brain collectors never seem to be used well or serve much purpose in
adventures I've seen them in.
The fact is, while I do
consider Castle Amber
to be a good adventure, it's not its random selection of monsters,
including the brain collector, that make it so.

In
my last couple of reviews for Iron Gods,
I've commented on the important role setting plays in any adventure.
With its science fiction trappings, Iron Gods
relies a great deal on setting to impart its flavour. Lords of Rust uses its setting
to particularly great effect, while The Choking Tower does not do
as good a job. Valley of the Brain Collectors
has the most contained setting of all the adventures in Iron
Gods so far, and that works to
this particular adventure's benefit. It is also the most alien of the
locations the PCs have visited so far, but it comes alive almost as
well as Lords of Rust's
setting does, with well-developed characters who have well-developed,
if alien, motivations. And
while it is an adventure that relies almost entirely on site-based
encounters, the denizens encountered never come across as if they
have just been sitting in one spot waiting
for the player characters to
arrive to fight them—a
problem that many site-based and dungeon crawl adventures don't
succeed in overcoming. Instead, the denizens of this valley have
relationships—both allied and antagonistic—and adjust to the
events around them. In short, the setting of Valley of the
Brain Collectors feels
actually lived in, making Valley
a very good adventure indeed.

SPOILERS
FOLLOW

Valley
of the Brain Collectors has the
PCs set out in search of Casandalee, a former android servant of
Unity, the A.I. with divine-like powers that is the central villain
of the adventure path. Some people might be wondering, wasn't that
the goal of the last adventure, The Choking Tower?
The answer to that is, yes, it was. At the end of The
Choking Tower, the PCs recover
the body of Casandalee along with a recording of the small amount of
information Furkas Xoud was able to recover from her brain before
springing the trap she'd left (see my review of that
adventure for more details). That information reveals that Casandalee
downloaded a copy of her mind into a neurocam and
from that into a compact A.I. Core
that she hid in a valley called the Scar of the Spider. Since
it is now impossible to recover any further information from
Casandalee's body, the PCs
must instead track down the neurocam.

I
commented in my review of The Choking Tower
that the adventure feels a bit like filler. Sending the PCs off on a
second search for Casandalee, unfortunately only magnifies that
feeling. This is less a fault of Valley of the Brain
Collectors than it is of the
overall adventure path design, however, and it doesn't change the
fact that much of The Choking Tower
only has the barest connection to the overall plot of Iron
Gods, which
is the main reason it feels like filler.
A second search for Casandalee could also have the side-effect of
making Valley of the Brain Collectors
seem like filler. However, Valley
avoids this with a more dynamic setting that is much more linked to
the adventure path.

Valley
of the Brain Collectors is very
much a sandbox adventure. The adventure begins with the PCs' arrival
at the Scar of the Spider, and how they proceed from there is very
much up to them. As in Lords of Rust,
there are no scheduled events that occur, and the PCs can take on the
various challenges in whatever order they please. Of course, some
challenges are greater than others and PCs may find that they need to
leave those ones till later. And just like Lords of Rust,
what makes this whole set-up work is the cast of characters the PCs
will meet along the way. While they will meet some very bizarre and
alien creatures, these aren't just random monsters waiting around to
be killed. They have motivations and alliances of their own, and the
PCs will likely want to find some allies to help them in their cause.

There
are a couple of factions in the Scar of the Spider. The principal
one is the Dominion of the Black. It was a confrontation with this
sinister interstellar organisation thousands of years ago that caused
the starship Divinity
to crash into Numeria. The Dominion hive
in this adventure arrived in
the Scar of the Spider just a few years ago, having been sent several
thousand years ago to chase down the Divinity.
The brain collectors of the adventure's title are amongst
the Dominion faction along with several intellect devourers, a kyton,
and a few other bizarre, alien creatures. The Dominion has been using
its position here to study the land, learn about the natives, and of
course, steal lots of brains (because that's what brain collectors
do).

The
presence of the Dominion hive in the Scar of the Spider has more
recently attracted a group of mi-go, who are enemies of the Dominion.
However, the old saying, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,”
does not apply here. The mi-go are very much villains as well, and
their alien mindsets will make it nearly impossible for PCs to ally
with them.

Also
present in the Scar of the Spider are a number of other small groups
and individuals, such as Isuma, the last survivor of a group of
kasatha who were on board Divinity
when it encountered the Dominion. They were recently discovered and
brought out of stasis by the Dominion, who immediately began
experimenting upon them. Isuma escaped, but the bodies of the others
are now being used by the intellect devourers. Isuma is carefully
plotting her revenge and can make a valuable ally for the PCs.

There
is also a malfunctioning reclamation robot named Binox that was
originally sent to track down Casandalee centuries ago. It has now
come to consider itself practically a good, but if the PCs can deal
with its ego, they might gain its help in constructing items for
them. The PCs will likely also encounter an agent for the Technic
League, a group of androids who believe all technology is evil and
must be destroyed (since they, themselves, are the products of
technology, they consider their very existence an affront to nature),
a human druid driven mad by the atrocities he's witnessed in the
valley, and a colour out of space.

The
compact A.I. core that contains Casandalee's mind is currently in the
possession of a yah-thelgaad (an advanced form of neh-thalggu) named
Dweller-in-Dark-Places, although it was originally found by Maukui,
one of the intellect devourers. Maukui, currently possessing
the body of a void dragon, is a potential ally of sorts for the PCs,
as he wants the A.I. core
back. Of course, since the PCs also want the A.I. core, they will
eventually be at odds with him.

All
these beings and characters have well-developed backstories and
motivations, but another thing that really makes the location stand
out is the sheer alienness of it. The PCs encounter very few things
native to Golarion in this adventure. Golarion is a world that
already has a large amount of weird and varied creatures living on it
(it's the nature of a game with so many monsters), so it can be
difficult to make creatures seem truly alien. Even unusual monsters
can end up seeming ordinary to players who have been playing fantasy
roleplaying games for many years. Iron Gods
looks to science fiction for further inspiration, but even there, the
aliens tend to be very human-like, both in appearance and
behaviour—not really all
that strange. But the
creatures in Valley of the Brain Collectors
are the bizarrest of the bizarre. These are not the human-like aliens
of Star Trek, but
rather dark abominations that don't look remotely human and use
strange technologies that don't really seem to fit standard science
fiction or fantasy.

The
Dominion uses organic technology, for example. Their spaceships are
alive and—as further example of the Dominion's alien mindset—are
discarded upon arrival at their destination and left to rot. The
occupants of Dominion ships don't ever expect to return home
(wherever home might be); their missions are for life. The PCs in
this adventure have the opportunity to explore the remains of the
Dominion ship that brought this particular hive to Golarion and can
interact with its dying mind.

The
H. P. Lovecraft influences in this adventure are very clear. Not only
are mi-go and the colour out of space lifted directly from Lovecraft
stories, but the brain collectors, intellect devourers, and other
creatures of the Dominion are also clearly influenced by
Lovecraft-style monstrosities. Their
motivations and desires don't work the way the motivations of
humanoids and other Golarion natives do. It makes them harder to
understand, harder to predict, and quite a bit more frightening. Note
that the Dominion creatures in this adventure think nothing of taking
thousands of years to follow one ship and then never going back.

A
major theme of Iron Gods
has been the PCs encountering unusual things. Previously, it's been
technology—which, on a world of magic, becomes like that world's
version of magic. But after three adventures, robots and laser guns
don't seem quite as magical and bizarre any more. So Valley
does the right thing by presenting the PCs with something completely
different. There are actually very few robots and guns in this
adventure.

The
adventure ends when the PCs recover the A.I. core with Casandalee's
mind intact within it. Of course, if they should fail in this or if
the A.I. core is destroyed, it could cause major complications for
the rest of the adventure path. The adventure does leave unresolved
the location of the neurocam that
Casandalee originally downloaded her mind into for just this
eventuality. GMs can place that in if needed.

The
first support article in this volume is on the Dominion of the Black
itself. Written by Mike Shel (who also wrote the adventure), the
article takes a closer look into the mindset of this galaxy spanning
organisation. The article makes a fascinating read and helps GMs
portray creatures with motivations and beliefs completely outside
normal human experience. I
particularly like the religious treatise, Nullity,
which is made up of only 13 words in mixed-up order. It
is said that if anyone deciphers the correct order, they will
understand the true nature of divinity.

The
second support article, by David Schwartz, is on alien technology.
The Technology Guide
introduces a huge array of technological items to add into Pathfinder
games, and is a very valuable resource for people running Iron
Gods. However, the technology in
that book is very much in the style of typical future human
technology from series like Star Trek
or Star Wars. Valley
of the Brain Collectors needs
something different, and this article provides a look at some very
different types of technology. The article provides an overview of
the style of technology employed by each
of four alien races along
with a sample item for each race. Two of these technologies (mi-go
and neh-thalggu) are particularly relevant to the main adventure. GMs
can easily use the background in this article to create further items
for each of these races, and perhaps even for other races as well.

This
volume's bestiary contains one new robot and three alien creatures,
including the yah-thelgaad and shipmind (the brain that controls a
Dominion organic ship). What is particularly interesting about this
bestiary is that all the creatures in it appear at some point in the
adventure. This is rather unusual for Pathfinder Adventure
Path volumes. While a couple of
monsters from each volume's bestiary are always in the adventure,
there are also usually a couple that don't appear, but rather just
fit the theme or style of the volume.
I like that this month's monsters all see use.

Overall,
Valley of the Brain Collectors
is a very good adventure and it' would
be great for PCs (or players)
who think they've seen it all. It does a particularly good job of
making its aliens truly alien, while still providing them with
personalities and motivations. At
its barest, this is an adventure where the PCs explore an area of
wilderness and fight monsters
there, something done many
times before in countless other adventures. But nevertheless, this
adventure is unlike any other adventure out there. As much as I've
always loved brain collectors, I haven't seen an adventure before
that effectively uses them. This adventure rectifies that.